BREAKDOWN

A bump in the road, a minor set back, but it doesn’t feel that way. I fell again, into the traps my depression and anxiety had set for me. Every time I try to take on my mind and win it over I seem to fail.

This weekend was sadly like many others in my life. I let my depression back into the driver’s seat of my brain, and my anxiety sat shotgun and helped in giving directions. I can’t pin-point when I was first infected with these diseases.

The change that comes over my mind is so drastic, that eventually I don’t recognize the person I become. I inevitably unravel myself in a frantic and neurotic matter. I become lost in my surroundings, and everything starts to feel foreign, unfamiliar, and foggy.

I tried so hard last week; every damn time I could muster the courage to stop this madness. I was reminded often that I was not in charge anymore. I tried every technique I’ve been taught, or could remember, and I grasped for anything that could stop the procession of self-destruction.

Before I knew it I was a stranger in my own body, I started to trust my anxiety and depression, and I didn’t trust myself. I hated myself, truly to the core by this point. I ached from all the pain and suffering I had put out into the world, as if my body was a beacon beckoning home all the evil actions, thoughts, and misdoings I have committed.

I relive every horrible memory that has happened in my life, and they keep playing on repeat, over and over again, on this imaginary camera reel inside my head. I would think back bad decisions I made, and eventually I realized it will only lead me down one road, with one outcome, Suicide.

I normally don’t want to die, but the short periods of time when I do, the feeling is very intense. It feels like the only right options when I am in this state of mind. I feel so misunderstood, so broken, like a failure, an imposture, a disgrace, an embarrassment. This time was extremely intense because, this time I had a team of doctors who I felt like I was letting down.

I contemplated life and death most of the week last week, but finally Thursday I had to speak to someone about what I was thinking. I called the VA crisis hotline, after trying and failing to explain myself to my mom. As I spoke on the phone about my plan to someone else who was in a good state of mind, I didn’t feel like I was being understood, but rather making myself safe from myself.

I couldn’t even make sense of myself, or who I was anymore, so I took the help, and went into the ER Thursday night. I wanted this all to stop, and I didn’t know how to do that, so I asked help from people that would maybe know what to do; doctors. I spent the weekend in an Adult Behavioral health unit, talking with doctors trying to figure out what is making my sickness in my brain tick.

A new diagnosis, some new medications, new therapeutic techniques are all being implemented into my present life. By the end of the long weekend I felt stupid, silly, sheepish. All this time, effort, resources, and work, all for me? So I promised myself when leaving Adult Behavioral Health Unit B on Sunday, that I would fight for my life, just like everyone else around me was.